Where did all the housing go?
In: 7
Nowhere, they are building more homes/apartments than ever.
However, housing that is affordable (and no, not “affordable housing” for Section 8 and such) has pretty much gone away.
I live 30min away from a decent metro, and since Covid prices have soared. The absolute cheapest apartment you can find is around $1500, and most places want you to make 3x, but even at 2.5x that’s $45k/yr, and minimum wage is $11/hr, so a single person needs to make almost double that to qualify.
It didn’t go anywhere. There just haven’t been enough built. (broadly speaking). The reasons are complex. Of course housing is a very local issue so there won’t be any universal answer.
The houses themselves (the buildings) still exist plus we are continously building more and more, however think about 30 or 40 years ago, there was no such thing as airbnb or other things like it.
They are extremely profitable and depending where you live it’s probably easier to rent it short term than renting to someone for long term, so as a landlord you might prefer to sign up for airbnb and rent it for 60% of the year to a lot of diferent people and still make a profit even if the other 40% the house is empty.
Also for someone investing in building houses to sell them/rent them, it’s probably more profitable to invest slightly more and build nice almost high end apartments that you can then rent for 1500-3000 a month (or more, once again depending where you live) than to build modest apartments or houses that the landlord has to rent for a much lower price range and not make his money back more quickly. So when you search for a new flat you probably don’t even bother to search for price ranges that you know you can’t afford but thats probably where most houses now a days are.
Nowhere, they are building more homes/apartments than ever.
However, housing that is affordable (and no, not “affordable housing” for Section 8 and such) has pretty much gone away.
I live 30min away from a decent metro, and since Covid prices have soared. The absolute cheapest apartment you can find is around $1500, and most places want you to make 3x, but even at 2.5x that’s $45k/yr, and minimum wage is $11/hr, so a single person needs to make almost double that to qualify.
It didn’t go anywhere. There just haven’t been enough built. (broadly speaking). The reasons are complex. Of course housing is a very local issue so there won’t be any universal answer.
The houses themselves (the buildings) still exist plus we are continously building more and more, however think about 30 or 40 years ago, there was no such thing as airbnb or other things like it.
They are extremely profitable and depending where you live it’s probably easier to rent it short term than renting to someone for long term, so as a landlord you might prefer to sign up for airbnb and rent it for 60% of the year to a lot of diferent people and still make a profit even if the other 40% the house is empty.
Also for someone investing in building houses to sell them/rent them, it’s probably more profitable to invest slightly more and build nice almost high end apartments that you can then rent for 1500-3000 a month (or more, once again depending where you live) than to build modest apartments or houses that the landlord has to rent for a much lower price range and not make his money back more quickly. So when you search for a new flat you probably don’t even bother to search for price ranges that you know you can’t afford but thats probably where most houses now a days are.
Global population in 1970: 3.7 billion.
Global population in 2020: 7.8 billion.
We didn’t build enough housing for four billion new people, partly because very few people want new houses built near them.
Global population in 1970: 3.7 billion.
Global population in 2020: 7.8 billion.
We didn’t build enough housing for four billion new people, partly because very few people want new houses built near them.
The extreme population increase over the years. 4-5 billion extra people have been created within the last 50 years, that’s a huge amount of time and money needed to keep up.
The extreme population increase over the years. 4-5 billion extra people have been created within the last 50 years, that’s a huge amount of time and money needed to keep up.
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